Earthware Blog

Bing Maps have just released their latest offering to web based digital mapping and it’s pretty impressive.

New features include tagged photos from Flickr which overlay the exact location on the Bing Maps Streetside imagery, putting a static image in context of it’s local surroundings enabling the user the to compare a location at different times of day as well as historically.

The transition of the imagery as you zoom in from space to the street side is seamless moving through road view, aerial view and then Bird’s Eye view before ‘landing’ you on the ground so you can walk  around the street. But it doesn’t stop there: Bing Maps are now starting to map the inside of buildings.

And, if you get bored of navigating around Earth (well just America so far), then look up to the sky and navigate your way through the planets and stars.

Seeing as Bing Maps is an interactive mapping experience, watch the man (well one of the men) behind these new features, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, and see for yourself what they can do. Our question is, will you be joining the (over)excited applauding by the end?

If you are interested in finding out more about online mapping and how you can use it please contact Earthware on 0845 642 9880 or email info@earthware.co.uk

We often get asked by our clients, and prospective clients, what areas of the UK are covered by Bird’s Eye imagery. Whilst we have a long list of place names this isn’t always helpful as what you really want is to see is the UK Bird’s Eye coverage plotted on a map.

Well we found one the other day that Microsoft have done and here it is (areas shaded yellow have Bird’s Eye):

The two other questions that we often get asked are “Will our area have Bird’s Eye View imagery soon?” or “Will new imagery be released in our area?”. As the imagery is provided by BLOM pictometry (I was lucky enough to have a tour of the hanger and see the planes and the cameras they use – very cool!) and where and when routes are flown depends on a number of often uncontrollable factors, I am not even sure that Microsoft know the answer to this. However, if you want to keep up to date then please see the monthly releases in the Bing Maps World Tour, a bespoke mapping solution which Earthware created for Microsoft, which clearly displays the details of all Microsoft’s monthly imagery releases (aerial imagery and Birds Eye views).

After months of biting their tongues, Bing have finally announced their latest additions to Bing Maps by releasing the beta version of Silverlight Bing Maps which features two new map modes (Streetside View and Enhanced Bird’s Eye) plus an Application Gallery and also Photosynth to name just a few.

The entire site is built in Silverlight (although the Bing Maps AJAX site is still available  if for some reason you don’t want to see the amazing new features). Features include:

Streetside: ground level, fully stitched together high res photographs giving a seamless 360 degree panorama.

Enhanced Bird’s Eye: In urban areas: Bing have used high resolution photography and stereo data to create 3D models of locations and placed them into the 2D interface of a webpage but with 3D aspect ratio from Silverlight 3. In non-urban areas: Bing have used their satellite imagery and aerial photos and re-projected the Earth to give a better perspective of the world.

Application Gallery: a catalogue of all the Bing Maps applications creating a simplified search and bookmarking function.

Photosynth: now fully integrated into the maps so you can fly in from space straight into your next door neighbours lounge(!) (but only if they have created a synth of course).

Simultaneous Multiple Searches: perform multiple searches within one map to discover all you can (tweets, blogs articles, local businesses, imagery etc)about a location without leaving the map.

Local Search Integration: Bing Local Search fully integrated into Bing Maps (the opposite has been available for a while).

Simplified Navigation: The navigation buttons have been moved to the bottom of the page and you can select Automatic (based on user feedback), Road, Aerial or Bird’s Eye or Streetside (our new friend ‘Blue Man’) views.

Integrated 1-Click Directions: if you know where you’re trying to get to, search for the location and select directions to get there approaching from the north, south, east or west.

Route Query Parsing: if you are planning to drive from, for example, Seattle to San Diego just enter “Seattle to San Diego” in the search box and get point to point driving directions.

Auto-Location Detection: when you load Bing Maps in Silverlight the site will automatically detect where you are located and centre the map to show your current position.

Weather: weather information has been embedded into the maps allowing you to view the latest weather conditions at your current location (using the auto-location detection) or for the location you are searching for.

Images: Bing Image Search has been integrated into Bing Maps giving you instant access to images of the location you are searching for.

Defined Regions Query Parsing: search for a neighbourhood within a city, for example, “San Diego Gaslamp,” and the map will centre on that neighbourhood and highlight the area on the map.

For a full list and description of the new features read Chris Pendleton’s blog or if you would rather watch a demo click here.

The Earthware team has been eagerly awaiting this latest offering from Bing Maps. The enhanced functionality is set to make displaying and searching for location based information much more simple. We know the Bing Maps team have been working very hard to develop this and we congratulate them on what they have achieved.

If you are interested in creating a map using Silverlight (or any other mapping API) to display your information then please drop us a line at info@earthware.co.uk.

UPDATED: As recommend by SoulSoltions in the comments I have marked each wish by whether it should be in the core control or in a separate toolkit (IMHO)

We have spent the last month working with the current Bing maps Silverlight CTP control (formally Virtual Earth) to create the new Bing Maps World Tour application which has been a really great experience. The current Silverlight control opens up a whole new world of possibilities when creating rich mapping solutions but as always we want MORE!

Here is our top 10 wish list for features and tweaks to be in the final map release in no particular order:

1.     Custom map view animations – include in core
Being able to quickly customise the speed and style of animation the map uses when navigating between map views would be great and allow developers and designers to add their own unique touch to their mapping projects.

2.     A basic pushpin & infobox control – include in toolkit

The Silverlight control team have deliberately left the creation of pushpins and popups to developers and designers as this gives us complete control and flexibility which is great and something missing from the current Ajax control. However, we can see some good reasons to have a basic pushpin and infobox offered by the final control release.

Firstly for new Silverlight developers coding a pushpin and infobox that works the same as the Ajax pushpin control is not a simple task so having a basic control they can style or build upon would allow people to get simple applications up and running faster.

Secondly for experienced developers being able to inherit from built-in controls will save a lot of repeated coding in different projects.

3.     Easy to style navigation controls – include in core
You can currently style the navigation controls, but getting access to this functionality is not straightforward (hopefully we will blog a tutorial on this soon). Being able to just apply a style or custom template as for normal Silverlight controls would be brilliant.

4.     Bird’s eye imagery – include in core

It goes without saying that Bird’s eye imagery is one of Bing maps greatest features, we hope it will make it into the first official release.

5.     Clustering – include in toolkit
Having a basic but extendable clustering solution would again help new and experienced developers quickly get applications online.

6.     Built in routing – include in toolkit
Although routing can currently be achieved quite simply using the examples from the interactive sdk, having this functionality built-in would save a lot of time and effort and again make it more open to new developers.

7.     Real time zoom level range data – include in core
The CTP release improves on the Ajax control by restricting zoom levels when the higher zoom levels are not available at a location. This is a great start but the data for this is not very detailed and you will still often get the dreaded camera icon appear.

Being able to get more detailed data, ideally in real time would be an excellent addition to the control ensuring we banish the camera icon forever! 

8.     Drawing controls – include in toolkit
Something that has often been requested for the ajax control is an officially supported set of drawing controls allowing polyline and polygon drawing as on bing.com. Having these available first in the Silverlight control would be great especially as it should be easier in Silverlight than it is in cross browser javascript. 

9.     KML / GeoRSS support – include in toolkit
The ability to quickly load a georss or kml file into the ajax control has been a massive help to new users and those of us wanting to quickly generate a map from existing content. Having this in the Silverlight control would encourage people to use the new control more as mashups would be quick to create.  

10.  Modular design
One issue with the ajax control has been that you need to download all the control code even if you don’t want to use all the features in your project. With the current Bing Maps Silverlight control dll coming in at 489kb it would be good to be able to optionally include features by having different dll’s for separate parts of the control. Another option would be to support assembly caching for the Silverlight map control similar to that in Silverlight 3 for the core framework dlls.

It was actually pretty difficult to come up with 10 sensible wishes as the current control has so many great features already. It would be great to see these all release but I have no doubt they are not all, if any, on the release list. Hopefully those that don’t make it might become part of the new direction that the codeplex project DeepEarth is taking, by creating a collection of reusable map controls in Silverlight.

We would love to hear comments about your own suggested features to see what the community as a whole want to see developed, so please add your comments below.

The Microsoft Bing Enterprise Mapping team approached Earthware two months ago, with an idea to communicate their monthly imagery releases to clients and partners in a more visually engaging format.

With each month’s imagery release potentially covering hundreds of updated locations worldwide the current system of publishing a simple list of all the locations was not demonstrating the full impact of each release. Microsoft was also keen to use their latest Bing Maps Silverlight control, to create a visually rich interactive mapping application which could be both a showcase for the monthly updates, and the possibilities that Silverlight and Bing maps can offer.

Microsoft were also keen to host the new application on the Windows Azure platform to show the flexibility of combining Azure services with the Bing Enterprise maps.

Why Earthware?

Earthware already had extensive experience with Bing maps and the new Silverlight control after taking part in the closed beta program in early 2009. As part of this Earthware produced a Twitter map demo application which Microsoft demoed as part of the Bing Maps Silverlight control’s release publicity. The Twitter demo also used the Azure platform.

What did we deliver?

• A visually rich mapping application using Microsoft’s Bing Maps Silverlight Control and hosted on the Windows Azure platform.
   
• A secure back office administration area to allow the Microsoft team to quickly, and easily, add and update monthly imagery release information.
   
• A back end database built upon the Windows Azure table storage service.
   
• The entire first release of the Bing Maps World Tour application was delivered in less than six weeks and in time for the challenging May 2009 imagery release deadline.
   

Try the finished Bing Maps World Tour application for yourself on the Bing Maps Website or read more about the application at the official Bing maps blog. You can also see the reaction of the developer community to the applications release on twitter.

If you are interested in Earthware helping you to create similar interactive animated mapping applications for your products please visit our interactive mapping consultancy page.

As you cannot have missed in the news recently Microsoft has re-branded its search offering to be called “Bing”. This means Virtual Earth is now called Bing Maps for Enterprise.

Yesterday Microsoft automatically updated the Ajax Virtual Earth control to use the new Bing logo and you may have wondered why the Silverlight map control was not also updated? The reason is that the logo is a resource in the Silverlight control assembly and is not pointing to an external file.

So does that mean we have to wait for a new release of the Bing Silverlight map control before the logo will get changed? Well yes and no, if you want it to be automatically changed you will have to wait for the next release but there is nothing stopping you changing it yourself now by following the steps below.

Step 1 – Getting your project setup

If you don’t already have a Silverlight project setup with the Bing silverlight maps (Virtual Earth) control working see Chris Pietschmann’s excellent getting started tutorial.

Step 2 - Getting the new logo

You can download the new Bing logo from the url below:

http://www.bing.com/maps/i/logo_powered_by.png

Save this to a folder in your Silverlight project (for example Images) and then in Visual Studio ensure you include the new image in your Silverlight project and set it to be “Content” so that it gets included in the Silverlight xap file.

Step 3 – Hiding the existing logo

You may be asking how we turn off the existing logo? Well luckily the current Silverlight control allows us to hide the logo using the “LogoVisbility” attribute. You can do this in the XAML code as follows:

   1: <UserControl x:Class="BingLogoDemo.Page"

   2:     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 

   3:     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 

   4:     xmlns:m="clr-namespace:Microsoft.VirtualEarth.MapControl;assembly=Microsoft.VirtualEarth.MapControl">

   5:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">

   6:         <m:Map x:Name="mainmap" LogoVisibility="Collapsed">

   7:             

   8:         </m:Map>

   9:     </Grid>

  10: </UserControl>

Step 4 – Adding the new logo

Now we need to add the new Bing logo. This is done by adding an image control and setting its “Source” attribute to point to the new logo file we downloaded in step 2. With a little alignment and margins we can get the logo to be in the same position as the original one. Below is the XAML showing you how to do this.

   1: <UserControl x:Class="BingLogoDemo.Page"

   2:     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 

   3:     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" 

   4:     xmlns:m="clr-namespace:Microsoft.VirtualEarth.MapControl;assembly=Microsoft.VirtualEarth.MapControl">

   5:     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">

   6:         <m:Map x:Name="mainmap" LogoVisibility="Collapsed">

   7:             

   8:         </m:Map>

   9:         <Image Source="/Images/logo_powered_by.png" Width="93" Height="29" Margin="7 0 0 25" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" HorizontalAlignment="Left"  />

  10:     </Grid>

  11: </UserControl>

That’s it your all done.

Summary

Hopefully this tutorial has shown you just how easy this is to update. We could of course have used the online image file as the source of the image control, rather than including the new file in our application, but that might cause issues in future if Microsoft change the name of the file, or resize it. You can download a sample project showing the new logo below:

Having released Photosynth for commercial use Microsoft  have now announced their commercial terms making it clear how this technology can be used.

Using Photosynth

As long as the synths embedded in a website comply with the terms of use, are publicly available and use under 20GB of storage they are free. If you want to make your synths private (not listed on the photosynth website) you can ‘unlist’ them but this comes with some restrictions. Unlisted synths are limited to 1GB of storage (it is 20GB for public synths) and synth views (when a view opens a synth) are limited to 500 per month. If the way you use photosynth exceeds or is likely to exceed these limits you will need a photosynth commercial license.

Benefits of a commercial License

• All the benefits of unlisted synths (not listed on the photosynth website or indexed by search engines)
• Unlimited synth storage
• Unlimited synth views

Synth views are counted as Microsoft Virtual Earth billable transactions. Microsoft track how many synth views are used and charge accordingly.

Photosynth has many applications in the commercial market. For example, Earthware client London Property specialists Residential Land are using it in the Virtual Earth property maps to give internal tours of their available properties.

Happy synthing!

Microsoft has just announced the release of the latest updates to their Photosynth technology, which through an integration with Microsoft Virtual Earth means that the technology can now be used commercially.

What is Photosynth?

Photosynth ‘stitches’ together digital photos of any object or location giving the user a 3D, 360-degree, interactive experience of the space. You can navigate around the ‘synth’ to view the object or location from all angles (according to the number and position of the original photos) and zoom in to the images to see the detail.

What has been added to Photosynth?

The latest release of Photosynth introduces:

· Commercial licensing - businesses can now use the technology to give their customers an exciting new way to explore and interact with their products, whether that be a hotel room or a car

· Privacy controls - users can now choose how they share the synths by making them public or unlisted on http://www.photosynth.net

· One click highlighting – makes navigating through the synths much easier

What have Earthware been doing with Photosynth?

At Earthware we have been playing with photosynth for a while now, and with Microsoft’s latest updates we have now made live our new property photosynths map using Virtual Earth in London property consultants Residential Land displaying three of their properties using this new technology.

Residential Land users are used to seeing the great Aerial and Birds Eye imagery of property that is available with the Earthware Property interactive maps already available on the site, but now with the Photosynth map they can also see the inside of the properties. They can ‘walk’ around the space to discover how the rooms flow together and even zoom in to see what the cupboard door handles in the kitchen are like. Buyers/renters are able to see the property inside and out without actually needing to go there, opening up more properties to them and therefore increasing Residential Lands rental and sales figures.

View the photosynth map to see exactly how Residential Land are using photosynth and contact Earthware to find out how you could be using it too.

UPDATED: If you hadn’t realised already its APRIL FOOLS today! But seriously if you are interested in getting your own real, or photo-shopped (like our demo), imagery added on top of virtual earth just for your website please contact us for details.

We have found out from our sources at Microsoft UK that tomorrow between 9-12am you can get yourself, or your company logo snapped on the aerial imagery for 10 major UK cities! If you can get a logo for your company displayed in a car park or on a rooftop you can get free advertising for your brand, or even better still get the whole company out in the car park and all look up.

Here is our offices from last year when we also received flight plan information in advance:

We will know more detail about the exact flight plans early tomorrow morning for the following cities:

• London
• Manchester
• Liverpool
• Cardiff
• Birmingham
• Bristol
• Norwich
• Leeds
• Coventry
• Reading (no surprise Microsoft UK are based here!)

If you want to find out exactly when they will be flying over you please email us for details. Microsoft have done similar campaigns before in Austria Australia called “look up and smile” for 2006’s Australia Day.

The images should be added to Virtual Earth within the next 2 months, if you would like to add a map similar to ours above when you imagery becomes available please contact us.